It seems that the script for the next film in the Star Wars franchise is so good that The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams regrets stepping down from that job for the sequel.
This news comes courtesy of longtime Abrams friend, actor Greg Grunberg, who mentioned that Abrams recently read the script for Star Wars: Episode VIII and loved it.
"He read it and said something he never, ever says," said Grunberg to the Washington Post. "He said: 'It's so good, I wish I were making it.'
Grunberg has known and worked with J.J. Abrams for a long time: their relationship goes all the way back to the 1998 television series Felicity, as well as Alias, which premiered on TV in 2001. Abrams created both shows.
Grunberg also appears briefly in The Force Awakens as Resistance pilot Snap Wexley.
Although Abrams took the director's seat for The Force Awakens, he's handing over those duties to someone new for the sequel: Rian Johnson, who made Brick, Looper and The Brothers Bloom. That suggests some originality in the next film in the Star Wars trilogy, something some critics found lacking in The Force Awakens in spite of its huge box office and critical success after opening this past weekend.
Abrams, however, remains as an executive producer of the Star Wars films.
Grunberg also spoke about his own experience working on The Force Awakens. Although he was instructed to use certain lines while piloting his ship, there was one line he refused to utter.
"It was lines like,' 'He's on my left!' and 'I got him!' and 'Poe!' I was told to also say, 'I've been hit!' but I refused to. I wasn't going to go down," he said.
An important character from The Force Awakens will also probably return in Episode VIII, although it might seem impossible. At at recent UK Star Wars event, Disney's Kathleen Kennedy stated that everyone present there would return for the next film. Actors in attendance at the event included Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Gwendoline Christie, Lupita Nyong'o, Max von Sydow and Adam Driver.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens is now in theaters. Star Wars: Episode VIII opens on May 26, 2017.
